I posted this on another thread, but his defenders, if any, did not want to comment. What does it say about the overall moderateness of the Israelis if they elect such a man to be Prime Minister. For his war crime at the Palestinian refuge camp that even got him in to trouble in Israel see: <http://mediamonitors.net/drbenalofs1.html> Another link to a BBC article supporting the case against Sharon.http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wo...000/1393861.stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1393000/1393861.stm>
hey i was watching dateline or another show such as that...and i saw a piece about someone sueing iran for some reason (dont' recall waht) they have legislation in place today that we can sue another country...does anyone have any info on this?
You think Iran would be the one with soon-to-be-problems more than Iraq? By the way, does Libya still exist? I haven't heard the word "Libya" in what seems like eons.
DoD: The Theodore Roosevelt is currently in the Med. It can't hit Afghanistan. And the 3rd Corps is deploying to the Persian Gulf, not Afghanistan. I'd say that Saddam and Gadhafi are both sweating heavily right now. Along with Assad Jr... The mullahs in Iran will get their turn.
boy, It is Iraq getting sued by the 'human shields' in the Gulf War. BTW, anyone happen to see that Syria is now on the U.N. Security Council??
I noticed that. Says something about the UN in my opinion. A known terrorism sponsor admitted into the world's premier global security policy organization (actually, that designation ought to go to NATO, IMO). But hey, the UN was designed to fail. I'm not surprised.
Wow! are you guys serious? Let's see, 1)) we bomb and according to Blair we won't abandon Afghanistan afterwards. (I'm in favor of this as the least we can do is to clean up after the massive starvation our creation of bin Laden and the present war will have caused). 2) We take on Iran or at least lob a few cruise missiles and bomb them. 3) We bomb Syria 4) We bomb Libya 5) We take over Iraq. 6) I guess we look for other targets and or put ground troops in a couple of the other of the previously mentioned countries. I'm just feeling safer all the time. Seriously,do you guys and gals? (unfortunately it is appearing that the taliban and Clutchcity are both devoid of females, which in the case of Clutchcity fortunately, so far ,has just led to verbal aggression) really think that the answer to terrorism is just to kill them all in the year 2001, put in a king or two who is beholden to us for his survival and then spend virtually unlimited money on intelligence and weapons afterwards.. Even granting one of your basic presuppositions that one American life is worth countless foreign lives, don't you think that we really have to do a lot more to combat terrorism?
glynch, As seems to often be the case, you're jumping to conclusions and putting words in others' mouths... Iraq will be attacked. Saddam is gone. I am as sure of that as I am that the Taliban will be attacked today. Iran, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Algeria will all be given a choice: either dismantle your terrorism support apparatus and gain our good graces, or we will dismantle it ourselves and make you even more of a pariah than you are now. I think that most of them, and maybe all of them, will cooperate once they see what's happening to Iraq and (by then) what happened to the Taliban. I am starting to suspect that you actually want Saddam to remain in power. You seem to want to lift the sanctions and do nothing at all to remove him from power. Your goals appear to coincide... Ditto with the Taliban. You seem to want them to remain in power at all costs. I am confused again. I am also curious: you speak of combatting terrorism, yet immediately dismiss any act which mught take a non-American life. Yet you appear to care very little for American life, at least insofar as you refuse to do anything which will actually result in saving one. Again ?
glynch: "...our (U.S.) creation of bin Laden..." RR: Fair to say that bin Laden remarkably re-created himself from a soldier to a terrorist since the period in which we trained him militarily. Will you agree that there is a difference between the two and that the US did not encourage or faciliate such a transformation? Oh, and also let's remember that The Taliban has been free to kick his butt out of Afghanistan at anytime over the last 5-6 years. Curious that they haven't done so yet. This morning they called on all Muslims to decry the events of 9/11.... yet they don't turn their backs (or put their clamps) on bin Laden. The Afghans were already starving before these recent targeted bombings. How much food do they keep at the terrorist camps or the airstrips?
Treeman, I don't support the Taliban or Sadam Hussein. I disagree with what you propose to combat them. Now would you please explain what exactly if anything you are willing to do to combat terrorism besides do military actions. In another thread you indicated you don't support democracy in other countries, if the results are not in what you consider US foreign policy interests. As I said, this is admirably honest. So if you feel that the only things lacking in the recent history of US foreign relations as far as our repsonse to terrorism is just insuffcient military action, you might as well admit it. By the way I liked your response on another thread regarding the post war killing of Iraqi civilians. It is going to cause me to do some research, which I'll post on that thread.
glynch, It is not that I feel that military action alone will solve this problem, I am simply positive that excluding the possibility of military action is the surest way to fail. In addition to selective military action, we need to go after them politically and economically, to echo the mantra of our leaders. Cut off their money supply bu freezing any assets you can; we've already done that. Cut off the money supply to the nations that support them - we must do that soon. This includes political as well as economic action; sanctions and embargos would be appropriate. In addition to this, to repeat another mantra, we need to get back into the spy business. And we'll have to get our hands dirty. Al Qaeda can be attacked militarily in Afghanistan, but elsewhere it can only be removed by covert means. And they are just one group. As for Iraq, Saddam will not be removed by political, economic, or even covert military means. He is literally the best protected man on the planet (better protected than our own president), and it will literally take some sort of military ground force to remove him. I do not, however, think that military action alone will solve most of these situations. But in some situations, I am positive that any effort will fail if it doesn't include military action. That's why we're bombing the Taliban right now. It is the only way in this situation. As for democracy, I support it as long as it isn't hostile to the US. If it is hostile to the US it makes no difference if it is a democracy or a dictatorship - it means us harm, and I have no problem removing any threat to our national security. I won't budge on that.
Hmmm....I can see another possible attack on Iraq, but Iran? Iran is, according to reports, a known supporter of Hizbollah(sp), but attacking Iran would begin a downward spiral into an all out West v. Middle East conflict, I feel.
i won't agree w/ the last statement, seeing as how the u.s. gave the green light for taliban take-over of afghanistan during the gang-bang of kabul in the mid90's by various groups.. madeline albright went so far as to go on record and say that she did not care what the taliban's human rights record was..
More lies. It is a fact that Pakistan - Musharaf in particular - is directly responsible for creating the Taliban. It is a lie that the US had anything to do with its creation. It is also a fact that we have criticized the Taliban from its inception on its human rights record. It is also a lie that we trained bin Laden. We did not. We trained many mujahadeen to fight the Soviets, but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we trained bin Laden himself. Just so no one gets the facts and lies mixed up.
Iran=the most stable country in the middle east. it has a great democracy. and even if you still hate what it did with the ambassadors (which according to islamic law is expressly forbidden...no hostages...no threats to ambassadors) you must commend the fact that it has an incredibly stable and modern economy given the fact that it has few ties with the west. yes it helps hizbullah and why shouldn't it? israel took over lebanon for no reason and there was no cry from the 'west' except a few. if the mossad is legal and great then why shoudln't hizbullah be? hizbullah isn't known for attacking civilians actually. mostly the israeli military which took over and butchered people in lebanon. it (israel under direct command of sharon) sponsered lebanese christian terrorists who butchered around 2000 people in a UN camp. Iraq=saddam sucks and should have been killed a long time ago but given that america did put in power the ba'ath party and has imposed sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of people DIRECTLY why would any iraqi trust america in setting upa new better government? Libya=another country who's dictator has viciously killed thousands of people. however again qaddafi was put in power by the CIA. and its funny that america did hit libya just a few years before the pan-am flight. of course mccain came on TV and said that the strikes really made a big impact in fighting terrorism at that time a few weeks ago. however he forgot for some reason that 3 years afterwards america blamed libya for the pan-am flight. Syria=i see a trend here. evil governments which butcher people and its really not that bad since at least they control the 'islamists'. syrian government has killed tens of thousands of 'islamists'. i don't know of one muslim that wasn't happy that hafez al assad died. does that paint a clear-er picture? Lebanon=whata hell did this country do except be b****ed by israel over and over and over again? and oh by the way you can't do the whole 'islamic fundamentalist' thing in lebanon. numerous lebanese are christian. a very good percentage of them. and their president/vp and the third man in command are all like three different religions. Yemen/Somalia=dont really know much about them Algeria=a evil evil evil general is in power because in teh early 90s french put him there. he sucks. he's killed tons of people. NO ONE LIKES HIM. oh but we wouldn't want those evil 'islamists' that the people voted in power would we? of course not. Sudan=a whole big mess. last time cruise missles bombed tylenol-esque making factories. that probably told them! oh yeah dr. hassan al-turabi was on PBS last night. usama bin laden was there but he was helping them build a road. when the us and saudi pressured them sudan offered osama bin laden back to saudi. however saudi didn't want to deal with it. they wouldn't want their image ruined by knowing that osama was tight with a lot of saudi family members. im also willing to bet that musharaf has dealt with the taliban personally and has probably given them support and just not in the political arena either. however america did give the 'mujahideen' 3 bil in the 80s. weapons instead of education was the CIA's style. and it is a big reason why the taliban were created. of course that and the fact that america pulled out as soon as the ussr collapsed. 'it ain't our problem no more' mentality comes back to bite you in the ass every single damn time.
Mr. Spur. ever trying to reach points of agreement, I can finally say I agree with one of your posts--the one about Iran. My own position is that we had to go and arrest bin Laden. We must make all efforts to keep Afghans from starving and must be scrupuloulsy honest about how much collateral damage is done. Not try to pretend that 37,000 tons of air drops will feed 6.5 million people. Forget the pr game. Forget about being cheap. At the minimum try to figure out how many additional Afgans will starve if we just disrupt whatever order is left while hunting bin Laden. In additon I would argue that we should feed all 6.5 million or whatever Afghans since they played the role of our loyal proxies in the war with Russia. Besides it is the right thing to do. If we do it up right it will actually win us some friends in that part of the world. Imagine if the whole Middle East could say look at Afghanistan the Russians and the Taliban destroyed them and the US completely turned them around and now they are in even bettter shape than ever. Imagine and they are 99% Muslim. I read a good quote from Abraham Linclon who was accused of being too kind to ex Confederate soldiers. He responded that how better to defeat an enemy than to turn him into a friend. I think Sadam Hussein is a bad guy, but so is the ruler of Libya, Iran, North Korea, Burma, Sierre Leone, and many other countries. We can't just go around and overthrow them all. I frankly don't think Sadam is much worse than Stalin or Mao or maybe even the Ayatollah Khomeini, many other leaders that we weren't obsessed with invading and overthrowing. The fact that we suported him while he gassed the Kurds and tortured his own people for many years frankly doesn't give us much moral standing to act shocked that he is bad guy.
boy: You finally reveal your true nature... all of it. Iran stable? They're an inch from revolution last time I checked. Democratic? If Khatami had any real power, maybe, but the mullahs (Khamenei) call the shots. Hezbollah should be legal? You might as well just say you support terrorism (which you apparently do). US put in the Ba'ath Party? Methinks another lie. Saddam used to be a professional assassin, and he literally killed his way to power. We didn't begin supporting him until he began his war with Iran. And we abandoned him after he started gassing people. Libya - more lies. Of course it's all the US's fault that Gadhafi likes killing Americans... Syria - the only government you are willing to admit is evil. And then only because it persecutes islamic extremists. It knows how dangerous they can be... Lebanon - favorite stomping ground of over 20 different militias and terrorist groups. Two are not islamic fundamentalist, and you mention one. I guess that since Hizbollah should be legal in your eyes, it doesn't count... For the 10th time, Musharaf created the Taliban, not the US.I'm getting tired of that particular lie. Yemen, Somalia, Algeria, Sudan... I'm beginning to see a pattern here. You support Saddam. You say you don't but can't seem to admit any specific evil he's done. You support the Taliban. You say you don't, but consistently say in one way or another that they are Afghanistan's best option. You think Osama has legitemate gripes. You think Gadhafi is innocent. You think Hizbollah should be legal. You're angry that Assad persecuted Islamic extremists... You appear to support the 'rationale' (if you can call it that) behind islamic terrorism in just about every instance. I therefore must conclude that you're pretty much a terrorist who just hasn't killed anyone yet. If you share their ideas - and you clearly do - then you're only a single step away from becoming one. Just last night I was telling another poster that I believed it wasn't necessarily too late for you. But less than one month after a major terrorist attack you show up and show your support for terrorism and hatred for us in every way possible save saying it outright. You leave me no choice but to take the gloves off and be rude: You are a fool. Perhaps the greatest fool I have ever seen on a message board. And I used to post on CNN.
glynch: Afghanistan - we will feed the people there as soon as we get our feet on the ground and can bring in convoys. The airdrops are all we can do right now. And bin Laden will never surrender, so there is no "arresting" him. He will not allow himself to be taken alive. Apparently his guards have orders to shoot him if it appears that he is ever about to be captured - he is not afraid to die. So we cannot arrest him; we can only speed up his death. And the sooner it happens, the less orders he can give. And Saddam is far worse than he is. He is worse than Khomeini was, because he has WMD and is willing to use them. glynch, this man is making nukes, not just germs and poison. A nuclear scientist recently defected from his WMD program and said that he has about 300 scientists working round the clock to build a working nuke. Unlike Stalin and Mao, he will use it, too. He needs to be removed. I'd be content with removing Saddam, the Taliban, and Osama/Al Qaeda. I don't want to go after every little sh*t dictator in the world just because I don't like their politics of their human rights records. I see three entities that are a direct threat to our national security, and I think they should be removed. No one else should require any military action, which is what you appear to oppose. At least no military action anyone will ever hear about. But Saddam's fate really isn't up for debate, anyway. The decision is made. You know those AWACS that NATO's sending to patrol our skies? Why do you think they're needed? Because ours are elsewhere. And Afghanistan no longer has an air force...
